PASSED!!!!

Hooray!  The year or so of stress is over!  I am now board-certified and I'm so happy and full of exclamation points!!!!

Giant Slides and Japanese Grills!

This weekend was filled with local mini-adventures, really good food and fun times with friends.  The weekend started a little early since SMS and I went out to lunch on Friday.  We went out to the 16 and I decided I wanted to try the famous Katsu place.  I had heard about it when I was on the Kitty Hawk but I had never been able to find it.  This always annoyed me since I knew it was on the base side of the street between the two gates and there aren't that many buildings located there.  Anyway, it's a very small storefront with a wooden sign over the door and if it's open, you'll see a three-paneled green door hanging and a small spider plant out front.  Well, Friday we were in luck!

It was worth the wait, although katsu isn't going to become a frequent eats!

When we sat down, we waited.  And waited some more.  Finally, we put our order in once he asked.  I had heard that the shop moves at the chef's pace and it's all true.  When we initially sat down, we thought we'd split a plate but by the time the food was ready about 50 minutes later, we were so hungry and each wolfed down our own separate place.  SMS and I both had the tonkatsu (breaded and fried pork cutlet) and it was delicious!

I went back to work way later than I meant to so I ended up staying late to make up the work.  I would have stayed later but then the network went down completely.  Well, I guess that was that.  I texted SMS to tell him I was on my way.  He was out at the yakitori place near our local train station and he asked me to join him.  When I went in, I saw that he had made friends with four Japanese construction workers who were very into arm-wrestling.  They were really nice and we had fun talking to them and a really nice lady next to our group.  SMS and I really intrigued them because I don't think many white people go in there.  Although everyone was super-nice, it's definitely a Nihongo-only place so you need at least survival Japanese+ to navigate.  Sometimes it's funny to me when I'm in a place near Yokosuka and people are surprised to see an American.  My life is so base-focused that I think, "Well, there's sort of a base nearby" but really, the base isn't all that big relative to the overall population density so sometimes, we're a novelty even if the base "Little America" atmosphere feels so close.

Zushi Beach

On Saturday, we met up with a bunch of friends in Ikego (Japanese side) for brunch, BBQ and beach.  We had delicious crepes (savory and sweet), yummy turkey burgers and condensed milk-filled strawberries.  Yum!  After lots of food, we got in our bathing suits (great timing!) and headed to the beach.  The water was so warm!  It was several degrees warmer already than San Diego at the height of Summer.  I am definitely ok with that!

The Start!

Today, we hung out in the morning and cleaned up the apartment.  We aim for cleaning it every week and, apart from travel, we've been pretty consistent.  This afternoon, we went out to Kannonzaki Park with Rose and her two kids and played on the various playgrounds sprinkled through the park.  The highlight was the huge roller slide where we really gained some speed. We used our new favorite Japanese purchase, the plastic slide sheets to help us go faster.  After sliding, we went to Rose's where we had delicious carnitas for dinner.  Yum, yum, yum!

Kannonzaki Park.  We parked at the parking on the bottom left, I would recommend
the Yokosuka Art Museum, center and slightly right.

Oh yeah!  We almost had a near disaster at Kannonzaki.  We parked in the lot and came back around 6:15 and the gates were closed and a note in Japanese on the windshield.  OH NO!  Fortunately, one of the gates was unlocked so we opened it and shut it behind us but we were nervous.  Note for next time- the parking lots close at 5!  Also, we went all the way around the point to where the rest station with the Italian restaurant was but it would be much, much closer to park at the Yokosuka Art museum.  The walk was lovely but the distance added up by the end of the day.  It's a huge park!

So, that was the weekend!  Not too much out-of-the-ordinary is planned for this week at work.  Paperwork, clinic, OR and a host nation emergency medicine conference on Friday.  Should be fun!

Host Nation Conference

Last night was pretty cool!  I took over as the host nation conference coordinator for the hospital recently.  Let me be clear, the real organizer is Yumiko-san, a powerful force of a woman whom I think secretly runs the entire hospital.  She is a lot of fun to work with and I really enjoy working with her.  My role is to do the "American required" stuff, i.e. sign the guest pass request for our Japanese guests and pay for the party/get reimbursed.  A bonus is that I also emcee the event, so I decided to break out my best (aka, not very good) Japanese.  Overall, it was a success although I became nervous so there were one or two silly mispronunciations that I quickly corrected (I think).

It was super warm in the room since the AC is not on in the base buildings.  There were two presentations that went pretty smoothly and then we gave our guests a token gift in appreciation for all they do.  Yokosuka Kosai hospital is our biggest referral center and we also rely heavily on their lab for hundreds more patients.  We are lucky to have such a good relationship with them.  The gift was an embellished paddle with intricate rope work, a Japanese/American flags pin and a nice engraving in both English and Japanese.  The woman at the wood shop scanned the Kanji when I ordered it and said, "This is very…formal."  I asked if it was old-fashioned and she said yes.  But I kept it as is since Yumiko-san had translated and formal was fine in this particular situation.

After the presentations, the food was served.  The menu was heavy hors d'oeuvres and I kept an eye out to see what changes I want to make to the menu in the future.  I plan on ordering an extra quesadilla platter, 1-2 more fruit platters and more shrimp.  As Mom says, you can divide parties into shrimp and no-shrimp parties and I definitely want to be known for shrimp parties!

Takatori-yama Climbing

Looking back, I cannot believe how much we did in a three-day weekend.  It was awesome to explore locally and have such a good time.   On Monday, we drove to Ikego and hiked to Takatori-yama, a rock climbing location we went to last December.  The hike is beautiful.  It starts off through the woods and then up many stone stairs to a small temple.  The temple is serene and beautiful with the tori gate, main building, bell structure and Jinz-o statues.  We pressed on.

Since we are expert hikers, we realized that we had taken a wrong turn when we were walking back down the (little) mountain.  Things look a lot different when trees have leaves on them in May vs bare in Dec!  So, we back-tracked and were also helped out by a Japanese guy singing in the forest.  No, he didn't sing the directions to us (that would have been awesome!), but he cut off his singing when he saw our (ok, ok, fine, SMS') giant pack and asked us if we were going to Takatori-yama and then gave us directions.

Bear right at this sign, not left

 We climbed for a couple of hours.  I am very rusty and the rock is kind of difficult for me.  It's basically tightly pressed sand that starts to disintegrate and embed sharp little sand particles into my out-of-practice, non-calloused hands.  Ouch.  I am not the biggest fan of rock climbing hurting so it was a pretty light, get-back--into-it-slowly type of day for me.

Looking good, SMS!

After climbing, we called our friend Melinda and headed out near Enoshima to get breakfast at bills'.  We had heard a lot about it and so had everyone else.  The wait was two hours and even though it looked delicious, we needed food about 5 minutes ago at that point.  Part of that is my fault since we got 10 minutes lost while driving.  So we went to a little pizza place that was very oishii and all was right with the world again.

That night, we went out to dinner with two really good friends from San Diego.  I'm so happy they're both here!  We went out to a little izakaya by their house and had a great time.  I feel so lucky to have great friends here so quickly.  In San Diego, it took me awhile to get settled in and if it took me too long here, it would be time for us to move again!

New Friends and Yokosuka Festivals

Beautiful beach near Uragwa

My sad sack bike.  It's a Miyata.  No glory with that name.

I feel like I have moved to Japan recently instead of SMS.  I am getting up insanely early.  Trust me, I wish I wasn't but I'll wake up between 5:15-6:15.  I will sort of know it's too early but then my brain says, "It's light outside!  Wake up!" and then my thoughts are off to the races.  Le sigh.  My life, so hard.

At the half-way point, smiling!

This morning, I was going to get up anyway because I decided to go road biking with a friend I had met at October's Run for the Cure.  [Where, for all my readers that don't know, I was the grand prize winner!]  Never mind that I don't really bike for exercise, I figured that I could hang well enough and fortunately, that proved to be the case.  The route had only a few challenging hills and even those were puny compared to some of the hills around here so I feel like the route was just about my speed (ha, ha, see what I did there?).  We went to Nobi and back for a trip of about 20 miles.  I came home to a message from SMS saying he was out shopping, an empty house and the saddest sight I've seen in a good long while…

Nothing sadder than an "Egg in a Hole" without an Egg :(

SMS came back with eggs and made his breakfast.  Then we picked up around the house until it was time to meet his friends for lunch.  We went to the Kalbi House, where they had really good-value lunch sets.  It was so nice to meet some of SMS' friends from his recent AOB class.  We had a great lunch and walked over to Umikaze Park.  There, the kids had an awesome time on the plastic sled slide-hill and the rock climbing wall.  SMS practiced his "kids setting" on his SLR and he was pretty happy with the results.  We headed over to Homes to scout out ideas for our balcony garden.  After Homes, I was pretty tired but SMS wanted to check out the Yokosuka Blue Street Festival.  We walked to Blue Street and it was a really nice, mellow walk.

 Blue Street was closed and while we had missed most of the performances, we had an early dinner grazing feast at various food stands, also known as food-on-a-stick. We had a chicken stick, pineapple stick, chocolate banana slices stick, cucumber with miso stick and, my favorite, a spiral cut potato stick battered and fried that was the most perfect balance of fresh potato chip and french fry.  I've never seen anything like it and it was so delicious!

Delicious swirl potato on a stick!

We finished up at Cafe Mercado, a pour-over coffee place in More's City.  The caffeine didn't completely help me so I took a quick 10-minute power nap before heading to the commissary.  We didn't have the best plan so our take-home groceries were a pretty random assortment, but it should all come together once we buy our produce out in town.

Grilling, Japanese-style

SMS and I are having a great time on our first real weekend home!  An added bonus is the extra time to relax since it's a holiday weekend.

On Friday night, we went to Yakinikuya Sakai.  It was a coal-grill yakiniku restaurant with great views overlooking the bay.  We had an assorted meat plate, vegetable plate, kimchi and rice.  The sauces were delicious.  We took a chance on the "Yuzu squash soda," which turned out to be a delicious citrus-flavored (yuzu) soda with pulp, not squash.  After dinner, we walked through the nearby Otsu neighborhood as well as the sensory overload of Don Quixote, an insane store with food, household items and lots of cheap plastic crap.

Tobe Station

Saturday was a fun field trip to Yokohama.  First, we got off at my old stop Tobe and walked by my apartment.  It was fun to see my old neighborhood and it was right by Y's shop, a bike shop that can fix Dahon bikes.  My Dahon was in rough shape after a Winter partly spent out on the balcony with the cover blown off.  The chain and gears more closely resemble a big rust bucket plus my derailer fell off. The transaction went pretty smoothly in a three-way Jinglish exchange (SMS, the bike guy and me) and while it's not cheap, it's still half the price of a new bike.  The bike was in pretty dire need of a tune-up before the Winter and with my not-so-benign neglect, it needs professional help.

The fish attracts a crowd.

After we dropped off the bike, we walked over to Minato-Mirai.  We went to the sushi go-round and had a really cool experience.  They were showing off a huge tuna they had bought.  There was a huge crowd of kids who were daring each other to touch the fish, poke the eyeball, etc.  We sat down to eat and thought the show was over but then they brought it inside.  They started carving it and everyone was cheering and watching.   It was definitely a performance.

A huge fish and a captivated audience

After they carved one section, the entire restaurant played "Janken (Rock, Paper, Scissors)."  One of the main chefs yelled out, " Saisho wa guy, jankenpon!"  Along with several other people, I won!  I got a free piece of fresh tuna sushi.  I split it with SMS, who was an almost-winner in another round of Janken but there was a play-off since too many people won initially and he didn't win the second round.

To the left, fresh sushi we couldn't pass up.  To the right, my winnings!

After sushi, we headed over to Cosmo World.  We went on the huge Ferris wheel and enjoyed the slow skyline tour of Yokohama.  Then, we headed to the Yokohama Art Museum to see the penultimate day of the "Fascinating Japanese Woodcut Prints" exhibit.  It spanned the late Edo period to present day.  My favorite artists were KOBAYASHI Kiyochika and HASHIGUCHI Goyo.  The prints were beautiful and it was fun to see an exhibit that paralleled the Mitubishi Ichigokan Museum exhibit we saw over the Winter.  Both focused on the wood prints with a sub-focus of the reciprocal inspiration between European and Japanese artists.

Yokohama, about 2/3 up on the Ferris wheel

We spent quite a bit of time in the museum.  We walked to Yokohama train station and picked up a Crepese salad to bring to a friend's barbecue.  She lives in the Japanese side of Ikego and it was a really nice dinner with the most amazing burgers.  We had a great time and a perfect way to end the day.

Park Golf Sunday

Who loves park golf?  GODZILLA LOVES PARK GOLF!!!

On Sunday, SMS and I had a great time in Kurihama with several friends.  On the agenda was lunch, park golf, the Godzilla slide and a walk through the Kurihama flower garden.  By the end of the day, we added a bowl of ramen to the itinerary.  It was an awesome day.

We met at Keikyu Kurihama and went to the basement supermarket to buy bentos and drinks.  Then we walked over to the park.  The poppies were out and some of the carp flags were still out from early May so everything was really beautiful and scenic.

While we have grand ambitions to have a themed golf game, we all wore normal clothes for this game. Actually, there was an unintended theme that two of the women got to take part in.  The theme was "Frumpy Japanese Grandma slip-on shoes for those who wore forbidden sandals."  Yes, for future reference, no sandals allowed.  The starter was a stickler for the rules.  Somehow, my almost-sandals made the cut but I could feel the judge-y stare!  

Paparazzi shot of SMS teeing off

 The game was a lot of fun.  We couldn't all go together so we had teams of three and we switched it up after the front 9.  I love Park Golf.  I want to be like Dick "The Destroyer" Bayer and open my own course in the United States.  I've talked about it before on the blog but picture a par-3 course played with one club that is a hybrid of a croquet mallet and field hockey stick.

After Park Golf, we headed up the hill to see our friend, GODZILLA!  We were so afraid of him, we decided to slide down his tail and then pose for pictures.  I'm not sure how we lived to see another day, but I lived to tell the tale.

I know I don't look very scared but it's a bravery facade!

After walking past Godzilla, we went down the roller slide.  Well, first, we bought little plastic sheets sort of shaped like a bucket in order to make the slide experience the best it could be.  It was so much fun and we went down several times.  Unfortunately, some of the pictures made it look like we were obsessed with grabbing our crotches so maybe I will work on making a more genteel slide sled shape.

SMS makes it look easy AND refined!  Plus, bonus Japanese child photo bomb.

After sledding, we walked down the hill to the flower garden.  It was SO pretty!  The poppies were out and it was so gorgeous and mellow.  Very idyllic.

Beautiful poppies

Artsy filter on a carp flag photo

At that point, we said good-bye to Brooke and Aaron who live in Kurihama.  The remaining four were about to part ways when we decided to grab some ramen.  After a brief detour, we went to the ramen shop that Aaron proclaimed "the best."  It was pretty delicious!  It was a very rich broth and I got the special ramen that came with two thick slices of pork belly.  There was also a mountain of bonito flakes that was a little too much, but I would go back again.  I would have to be hungry, but not too hungry because I think if I ate the whole bowl, I would have regrets.